How to get a work permit in Poland

DISCLAIMER: The following post is intended for educational purposes only and should not be considered an authoritative guide on how to get a work permit in Poland. Its intent is to give the reader a general overview of the process and what kinds of documents are expected. Beginning the process, get a current, Polish version of this form and go over it with a Polish speaker who is willing to help you. Procedures and requirements may have changed since the writing of this article or may have been inaccurately characterized in it. I invite all constructive input you may have on how to make this article more accurate and useful.

What’s a work permit?

Technically, there is no document called a "work permit". Instead a company wanting to employ a foreigner must obtain a "pledge for work permission", which is described how to do below. The foreigner then submits this document along with their visa or residency card application, allowing them to receive a work visa or a residency card with an annotation entitles them to work legally. For the purpose of simplicity, the "pledge for work permission" will be referred to as a work permit. In Poland, the work permit is very restrictive to the foreigner and employer alike. It is linked to one employee and one employer, it cannot be shared. This means that if a foreigner gets a work permit in Poland, he or she can only work for the company that the work permit specifies. If the foreigner wants to change employers or work at more than one job, a work permit must be obtained for each employer interested in hiring the foreigner.

Who gets the work permit?

There is some bureaucracy involved in obtaining a work permit, although the process has been simplified in recent years. The work permit requests specific information from the employer, so the employer must apply for the work permit, not the employee. As a result, very often companies avoid hiring foreigners legally simply because they don't want to be bothered with all the paperwork.

A foreigner finding themselves in a situation where their employer does not seem eager to obtain a work permit has a few options:

they may examine the information below and decide to take matters into their own hands and take care of as much of the process as possible, boiling down the process to simply signing a paper or going to an office, or

they may want to start their own company and become a freelancer. In the case of language teachers, companies welcome working with self-employed teachers because they do not have to seek a work permit for them and an invoice is preferred to an employment contract. The foreigner benefits as well because they seek their own work permit and they need to do so only once, no matter how many places the foreigner works.

Good question, but it's hard for me to say without any further research into the matter.

If I were to guess of the top of my head, the situation would be identical to what a Polish employer would have to do. In other words, as a sole-proprietorship (one person company) apply for a work permit for yourself. HOWEVER, the unanswered question is can a foreigner start a company in Poland without a work permit?

I recommend have a Polish friend call your local city hall and find out what it takes for a foreigner to register. Also, there's a lot of info available on city hall websites nowadays.

If you don't have a visa, how are you staying in the country legally? If you're not in the country legally, it may be a barrier to getting legal status as a work.

However, legal or not, this has no effect on your employer getting a "promise for a work permit". Once he obtains this document, you can either a) go to the appropriate embassy/consulate in your home country and get a work visa stamped into your passport or b) enter Poland on a tourist visa, then begin the process of applying for a residency cards, which will entitle you to work.

Either way, your employer can begin the process of getting you a work permit.